Yup I agree - and I think that's the best argument against his point (NOT that he's a sexist).

Is it taken into account? I think he's just saying that as an explanation for why there may be less women right now. Not that it should be used in any way. But I could be wrong here.

He's a sexist because he is arguing for the statis quo based on genetic traits of females. He is saying don't bother to judge them individually we already know they aren't fit to be developers.

Ok - I really didn't think that's what he was saying but maybe I was just being too kind.

Thanks for listening and engaging.

You're welcome. I value open and honest discussion.

So I re-skimmed the memo, and I'm going to have to continue to disagree. Please point out to me where he says "not to judge women individually since they aren't fit to be developers."

The two most important thesis-defining and controversial sections to me seem to be where
1) He tries to explain why there might be more men than women in tech
2) He gives suggestions for how women's important distinctions could be valued more highly

I just don't see advocating for discriminating or not treating women as individuals when it actually matters - like the hiring process.

And once again, to be completely clear -

I think he's very wrong about his analysis that gender differences are even remotely close to both anti-female discrimination and cultural norms as causes of the gender gap in tech, and I agree that some form of affirmative action is necessary to recuperate from this setback. But I don't think we will win this argument without trying to understand the opposing viewpoint and frame it in a fair way and without strawmans.

A dead give away was when he talked about lack of free speech on college...

thats why much of his article is contradictory. you cant judge ppl properly and avoid discrimination if you believe and internalize much of what he asserts, esp his list of personality differences.

So, if I do a point-by-point evisceration of this letter, I would expect to go pretty viral?

This letter is so out-of-bounds and blatantly ******ed... I'm not sure why anyone is giving this any discussion or credence. It seems impossible to me that an illiterate working in the swamps could manage to write a piece that is line-by-line factually incorrect, much less a Google Employee and Harvard grad.

FWIW, I've worked at companies where the racism, sexism, etc, is completely overt. People really need to rethink their world, or at the least, try to attend restaurants with 50 / 50 servers and cooks, lol.

I don't think it would go very viral at this point. The guy seems like a sheltered idiot who has little experience or knowledge of life.

doubt it goes viral but who knows? I wouldnt mind reading it.

but I think you are pretty sheltered if you are surprised by his piece. you see who the usa president is? and the internet is chock full of ppl who passionately subscribe and promote such theories.

He really shouldn't have gone anywhere near the physiological differences between men and women. Thats where he lost his job imo.
But I think this is overall an overreaction. The fact is a quick google search tells me that 18% of CS graduates are women and 19% of tech employees at Google are women. So where is the underrepresentation exactly?
There are just more men than women interested in tech.

I dunno man, thats a pretty low percentage.

Maybe it is low, but how is that google's fault?

edit:
I don't mean to strawman you, maybe your argument isn't that google is practising discrimination, but its certainly the media's narrative.

If there are systemic reasons women stay out of STEM fields then it isn't googles fault per se, but stopping programs that seek to counter it at this point wouldn't be a good look. It's not easy and if you're committed to diversity I don't see how you're going to avoid pissing off angry white guys. The question becomes do the benefits outweigh the costs?

What's your argument exactly? Because we can't expect Google to hire 50% of women for tech roles when only ~18% of the people who pursue a tech career are women.

If the point is to discuss why more women don't pursue a career in tech then we can have that discussion.

I personally think it's a combination of factors imprinted intentionally or unintentionally by parents and society on to children. Humans are social creatures and even if we don't hear explicit messages we can often gather social behavior from social interactions in our daily lives as well as from popular culture especially in the Internet age.

I would assume some of the most extreme parts of the anti-diversity culture also happen to be interested in tech (no correlation just by pure chance/numbers) and come up with a lot of the most hostile environments, messages, and interactions for women and this is applied to a broader spectrum of tech employees because it fits the narrative of white socially awkward male.

Not trying to down play how systemic the problem is I just think it's easy to apply the anti-woman narrative to the tech employee stereotype.

Anecdotally where I work but before I worked there we had an incident where a male and female coworkers were having sex together and it got put of hand and spilled over into work when the "relationship" didn't work out.

To this day department of all men almost always blame the woman for the problems that spilled over and how crazy she was and all I hear from them about the guy is he was an idiot for doing it with a smirk and a head shake. We haven't hired a woman in our department since then just a bunch of white men. Don't know if that is a coincidence or not as I don't know what our applicant pool is for hiring but it always makes me wonder.

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If you read the paper you're in exact agreement with him and in opposition to Google's HR and hiring practices.

Except for him wanting to not hire women for development roles he deems "masculine" and direct them towards "feminine" dev roles and stop hiring for diversity.

I'd ask for a quote but that would require you to read it.

His main thesis was Google should discontinue programs in place that focus on supporting women and minorities based on unproven leftist ideology and implement his more rational ideas for separating devs based on gender and encouraging women to fill dev roles that closely align with what are considered more female norms.

Edit: Rough paraphrasing women should work on front end stuff because it's more socially oriented and deals with being agreeable to people.

He did also promote more paired programming because women are more social.
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Who here was alive in the 1980s? (raises hand).

Think about what the world was like back then:

Nerds -- all men, all computers.

All tech stuff was very explicitly advertised to boys.

Movie tropes: Hacker sitting in an unlit room with a jar to pee in.

Even in the 90s, knowing anything about computers was considered super nerdy.

So, no, women weren't exactly keen on sitting in a dark room, peeing in a jar, not showering for 3 months, and growing a long beard.

It's a contrast to how things were before the 1980s, where computer programming was dominated by women, but that's a totally different story.

Even though society is making large strides to remove barriers, we still have people 30+ who were not only advertised to, but raised by a generation who was advertised to as well. The old-guard has to die, and eventually, this new generation where social norms are less beholden to that kind of advertising will take over.

With all that said, only 30% of all job categories are 55 / 45 or "more even" split. I think it's silly that computer tech is the whipping post on this debate....

You don't want to say it, but you know this is exactly why your department is all male.

People are getting way too worked up over this memo. Think about it. Have you ever met a well adjusted individual who decided to write a 10-page memo open letter to his workplace without it being part of his responsibilities. The most likely explanation is this guy went off the rails a little and is dealing with some mental stuff. I'm not a psychologist, but he was either screwed up when he got there or became screwed up over time. We don't need to dissect the meaning of the memo because its author, simply by taking the time to write it, has already outed himself as someone not to take seriously.

Let's wait for the book written by a harvard phd currently practicing sociology research before discussing the finer points of gender differences in the workplace.

I think we agree on all of this. Stereotypes and social conditioning in various forms have led to a segregation of women and men in the labor force, perhaps tech specifically. If I missed your thesis I would like to hear from you where we disagree.


Nope I am just being objective in my assessment. I am not normally involved in hiring decisions and the only ones I have been the applicant pool only had 1 female candidate out of 2 opent positions. She was woefully unqualified for the position so it was a no brainer. Other departments at my company are predominantly female as well but I just work it at a non-technical company so most don't apply to open positions in our department because they aren't qualified.

I was being tongue-in-cheek. I don't mind picking on idiots and rattling nerves, but I certainly would do nothing to promote their stupidity.

You are correct, I wouldn't know the average mentality / naivete of a Gates Mills resident...

IRT to the president, simplifying politics to single issue is always incorrect. Rather not discuss any further.